The Beat

Country star Travis Tritt was getting ready to go on tour when he heard of the death of his friend Dale Earnhardt (below). "I felt the need to do something to let all the other fans know I'm feeling the same loss they are," says Tritt, who inserted Earnhardt's name into the lyrics to his song Put Some Drive in Your Country. Tritt also dug up a guitar with Earnhardt's face on it, a gift from a fan. After beginning a show in Syracuse with the song and the guitar and receiving an "over-the-top" response, Tritt decided to start every concert that way. "I'm not looking for headlines," says Tritt. "I'm just trying to honor a friend."...

Annaphiles, we feel your pain. Anna Kournikova has been MIA since last month as the result of a stress fracture in her left foot. The injury forced her to skip a WTA event in Acapulco, where she would have been the top seed for the first time ever. So what has the divine Ms. K been doing? According to a source, Kournikova has been shooting an exercise video, to be released later this year. Must be a low-impact workout....

For the past year Patrick McEnroe has done sports reports on Don Imus's syndicated radio morning talk show. McEnroe, who lives in L.A., has had to get up in the wee hours to do his segments for the New York-based program. On March 6, after being made to wait a couple of hours before getting on the air, McEnroe got into a heated on-air debate with the host that ended with McEnroe's quitting. "I said, 'I-Man, what's the story? Do you want me to do the sports?' " recalls McEnroe. "And he said, 'Quite honestly, no.' He said he only did sports because of the sponsors. So I told him I don't need to be here." As for his radio career, McEnroe says, "Maybe I'll call Howard Stern."